


So Don't Lie

by KissTheBoy7



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Blue Oblivion, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1889499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are going to hell again, and Kieren can feel it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Don't Lie

**Author's Note:**

> So I finally got to writing some In the Flesh fic based on my most persistent headcanon... I was wondering if I should make this into a multichapter? I have a vague idea of where it might be headed - down a pretty dark road - but I don't know that anyone would want to read it.

He hadn’t actually thought that Simon would notice the bottle missing from the fridge in the bungalow. There were dozens of them there, usually – and he honestly doesn’t know why, because the ULA hadn’t met there in almost two weeks, since Simon had saved his life.

(No one has bothered to explain to him _why_ they’ve stopped showing up, but he has a feeling that he doesn’t want to know.)

Kieren is okay with not knowing things, sometimes. Or at least he used to be. He used to be a lot of things, though – alive, for one – and it’s only just occurring to him that maybe ignorance isn’t always the best solution to an uncomfortable situation.

At least, not when there are dozens of people who want you even deader than you are now.

But Simon is perceptive.

He’s also tactful.

Which is why he doesn’t bring it up until the day that Kieren nearly forgets to slip it into his pocket when they’re leaving the house.

He thinks that if his heart were beating, it may actually have stopped when he felt instinctively at the side of his thigh and found nothing but fabric. Simon gives him one of those raised-eyebrow questioning glances that are so infuriating, so damn attractive that he could just about kiss hi. (He’s been doing a lot of that lately.)

“Ah-” Lips twisting into a thin smile, he backs toward the stairs. “I’ll – be right back. I forgot-”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, just turning to jog furiously back to his bedroom, back to the bottom drawer of his nightstand where he’s been keeping it while he’s asleep – that’s just about as far as he can stand to be from the dreadful thing lately. He drops to his knees beside it and rummages, momentarily petrified, as he is every time, that he’s managed to lose it. Or worse – that someone else has found it, and taken it. Or _worse –_

Well, there’s no use following that train of thought.

Kieren is learning, slowly, that giving himself anxiety attacks every day is not the way to go about surviving in Roarton.

He may as well focus on his day trip. With Simon. Lovely Simon…

His fingers clamp around the cool blue glass and relief washes over him like a cool cloth for all of three seconds before Simon’s voice interrupts his fantasies.

“Were you going to tell me?”

Kieren whirls, panic rising in his throat again. Simon is leaning against his doorframe, watching him – he doesn’t sound angry in the least, but that doesn’t mean anything. Kieren has known too many people to turn on him at the drop of a dime, and although after the display at the graveyard he doesn’t think Simon is likely to be one of those people, he still gets a tad nervous sometimes.

“Ah –”

He briefly considers lying, and then discards the idea when Simon blinks at him slowly, waiting for an explanation. He offers a hand and after a moment’s hesitation Kieren takes it, slipping the bottle into his pocket as he stands, awkwardly meeting his eyes.

“I didn’t mean to steal from you.” He coughs, glancing away. This is not how he’d anticipated their day trip beginning, and he’s beginning to feel like the day has gone to ruin. “I, er – I just – I thought it would be – safest.”

“I don’t exactly have any use for the stuff.” Simon gives him a wry smile and strokes a thumb across the back of his hand softly. So goddamn suave, it should be illegal… Then again, if the next MP was anything like Ms. Martin, he might actually have to worry about that. He shudders just to think of it.

“Kieren? I don’t want you to feel like you have to answer me now, but I’d like to know what you were thinking. What you’re thinking now.” He emphasizes it with a squeeze of his hand, looking into his eyes seriously. Kieren briefly considers that he might be melting…

His hands _are_ shaking just a bit.

(That’s sort of common lately, but he can’t figure out why.)

Simon has a distinct – and unfair, in Kieren’s opinion – advantage when it comes to these things. He’s always so generous and so compassionate and so indulgent, and Kieren feels guilty ever denying him anything.

Not to mention, he’s bloody _gorgeous_. Even with

And so even though it’s not something he talks about – and even though a week ago he’d probably have rather tear off his own limbs than allow Simon to find out about this at all – Kieren takes a breath –

And lets it out.

“It’s nothing.” He shakes his head, breaking their gaze after a long moment. There’s a shift in the air, sort of like a deflation. He can feel Simon looking at him but he can’t bear to meet his eyes again, not now, not when he knows he’s being lied to. God, he hates lying, but sometimes he really has to, sometimes it’s just – not – it’s just _not_ a good time to talk about it.

Maybe there will never be a good time.

“Hey. It’s alright,” Simon is saying, and he cups his jaw and pulls it back up so that he can kiss him, very softly, as though that’s supposed to be reassuring.

Kieren lets out a shaky sigh and presses against him, arms winding around the taller man’s neck. He’s hyperaware of the shape in his pocket, although he can’t feel it against his thigh – can’t feel anything, actually – and it makes him want to cry and scream and lock himself in his room, all at once, just tell Simon to _leave_ and –

God, he wants to go back to the cave.

_It’s becoming just like it was before and I don’t know how to change it._

Simon holds his face like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Simon kisses him like he’s _special,_ like he means something, like he could do no wrong. Simon is a patient bastard. A fucking martyr. A saint. He can’t possibly be real.

Kieren can’t believe he’s real. He can’t believe that he deserves this.

He wonders vaguely if all of this can be traced back to the disaster with Rick, and quickly banishes the thought. _What the hell is wrong with you, thinking of Rick when you’re kissing this – this – Simon?_

Because there really are no proper words for Simon. Not even when he’s ranting, not even when he’s quoting Revelations, not even when he makes Kieren want to tear his hair out at the roots with all of his bullshit.

(Honestly, every day he’s a little less skeptical. But he doesn’t know if he wants to admit that yet.)

He makes a low noise in his throat and bunches his hands into the front of Simon’s jumper, pulling him blindly back towards the bed.

Maybe it’s best if they stay inside, anyways…

Simon pulls back at the last moment, breathless but still staring at him intently, his breath ghosting over Kieren’s lips. (Wait – he can feel his lips? _What?_ Was- was he imagining it? He must have been imagining it…) “I hope you aren’t just trying to avoid the question.”

Kieren collapses backwards onto the pillow with a groan and covers his face with his hands. He mutters around his fingers, the brief tingling of relief already sharply fading. _Damn it._ “You can have it back if you want it.”

“Didn’t I already tell you that I didn’t have any use for it?” The mattress dips as Simon moves to sit beside him, his hand resting gently on Kieren’s chest, over his silent heart. “Kier – look at me.” He nudges him until the younger man peeks from between his fingers, and smiles at the bare color of his pupils. He’s always seemed fonder of him like this, bare and maybe even proud to be, which has been the trend lately. His family disagrees, but then again, they haven’t tried to make him put his contacts back in, so – “Kieren.”

He touches his face again. Kieren wonders briefly what it would be like if his hands were warm, if he could feel him beyond the barest hint of pressure on his deadened nerves.

“I don’t want to pressure you.” Somewhere along the line Simon had figured out exactly how to soothe Kieren with his voice alone, and Kieren is never sure whether he should curse him for it or just cry, cry for ages, cry forever about Rick and Amy and him, and everyone, because this isn’t fair and he’s _scared_ and he doesn’t deserve someone like Simon who’s been putting up with all of his self-loathing bullshit for so long, and who saved his life, and who just seems to _love_ him so much and Kieren isn’t even sure if he can say that he’s really _over_ Rick yet and he just feels so _guilty_ all the _time –_

“Kieren, it’s okay.” His hand flashes down to his pocket, clutching at the bottle through the fabric as though it’s his last lifeline. He opens his eyes and finds Simon hovering over him, silently worried, searching his face for anything. Anything. “I’m certainly not going to judge you for carrying drugs around.” He laughs, self-deprecating and Kieren doesn’t like that laugh very much at all. “I was just – call it curious.”

“I’m fine.” He has to blink a couple of times before he’s sure he can fake it, but he knows that Simon sees through the illusion of his smile. He always does.

Because he’s okay in Roarton – but Roarton isn’t exactly okay with him.

He can’t do it. He can’t just let them die. None of them – not after Amy, and especially not Simon.

What would he even do with himself if Simon were gone?

How many people is he going to have to bury before he snaps? How long is it going to be before he gets fed up with it all – before he just can’t take it?

He used to think of the ULA as extremists, but now he’s not so sure. He’s starting to understand.

The little blue bottle… it’s terrifying, no matter what. Just having it is terrifying. Holding it in his palm, knowing firsthand what it can do… what it’s done to others, what it’s done to _him,_ what it had almost made him do…

But what if he needs it?

Kieren is well aware that he’s small, and that he’s weak. But no one is weak when they’re rabid. They’re _unstoppable._ And that’s what he needs. Just a backup, just a precaution. He needs it. He can’t leave the house without it anymore because what if he _needs_ it, what if, what if?

They shut their blinds when he passes. All of them.

Roarton is never going to be a friendly place, and Amy is gone, and now he has no one left but Simon who knows what it’s like to be dead but alive, to be hated and to hate yourself all at the same time, to feel an ache in your still, silent heart as they lower your best friend’s coffin into her grave a second time.

He needs it.

He shakily releases the bottle and brings his hand back up to touch Simon’s face, tentative, searching. One of them, both of them, always searching for something in one another. He wonders what it would have been like to do this with Simon in another life – one where they can feel their palms sweat and their cheeks flush, one where neither of them were in mortal danger just for existing, one where they might have a chance of being happy together. He wonders.

But then Simon presses their foreheads together and he looks into his eyes, and he remembers that they’re both strangely beautiful just like this.

“I don’t feel safe,” he breathes at last, and Simon kisses him so soundly, he knows that he must understand. He does. Of course he does.

They all understand it.

Nothing in Roarton feels safe. He’s not even sure that he would feel safer elsewhere – he’s not sure that even Paris would be a nice change, because God only knows what they’re doing to the PDS sufferers there, fuck if he knows. He just wants out. Out of his skin, out of this life, out of this constant anxiety attack. The only thing he doesn’t want out of is Simon’s embrace, because Simon is the last of them left.

Jem may love him, and his parents may love him, but they’d all been perfectly happy to send him away so that they didn’t have to try anymore.

It’s not their fault. But it is.

It’s everyone’s fault and somehow Kieren still manages to feel guilty, and he clings to Simon’s shoulders and kisses him roughly, desperately, even though neither of them can really feel it – even though they can’t taste each other on their pale lips – because what else does he have left?

Simon, God, he’s so beautiful. He’s so much more than Kieren can even comprehend, and still he looks at him like he’s precious.

He kisses him, and Simon kisses back, eager to match his desperation – and when it’s over, and they’re lying there together with their hair disheveled, their shirts rumpled, their chests heaving, Simon touches the bottle in his pocket and sighs.

“You know that you don’t have to prove yourself, don’t you?”

“It’s not about that,” he protests, because it’s _not._ But Simon understands, doesn’t he? He has to. “I just – I don’t want to talk about it, alright?”

He’s being a coward. Again. Jem would tell him so if she were here and not at her exams, probably having her own anxiety attack. Jem doesn’t have the time or the energy to help him with this, and she probably wouldn’t understand any of it, either. Jem has her own problems and Kieren is the older brother, anyways. He’s just going to have to keep his to himself.

That’s the way it should be, or so he tells himself.

Simon just looks at him for a long time. He shakes his head, minutely, but in the end he resigns himself with a soft exhalation.

“Alright.”

He understands. Of course he does.

Kieren clutches his hand tightly, grateful, and sits up at last. He plasters on a smile and almost believes it himself. “So, about that day trip?”

This isn’t the end of it. Simon is tactful, but he’s not a pushover, and he’s going to ask again. This won’t go unspoken forever if he has his way.

(Simon usually gets his way. Simon is damn persuasive, and besides that, he can be a sneaky bastard and Kieren knows it.)

But he’s not going to think about it right now.

He’s not going to think about Amy. He’s not going to think about Gary. He’s not going to think about the bottle in his pocket that he might have to use someday soon, or the way that his neighbors, his family, step back at the sight of him. He’s not going to think about the fear in their eyes… the disgust.

He’s not going to think about _anything_.

Things are only ever okay for a couple of seconds at a time before they go to shit again.

He’s got to savor it.


End file.
